A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya is a startup offering fun music apps without any AI prompting — SkimNews
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- A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya raised a $5.5M pre-seed round from Mantis VC, SV Angel, Boxgroup, Quiet Capital, ERA, Common Metal, Gold House, Liquid 2 Ventures, Breakers VC, and Systemic Ventures.
- Máuhan M Zonoozy, former head of innovation at Spotify who left in 2024, founded the company after previously building video remixing startup Bubbl, which was acquired by Cricket Media.
- Dawn Ostroff, former Spotify chief content and advertising business officer, joined the startup as an advisor alongside the institutional round.
- The startup releases tools as 'singles' that share a common theme of musical interaction: Speed Surfer (Chrome extension that tweaks speed and filters), Usersound (audio usernames where each letter is a note), Stacks (3×3 grid stem mixer), Drops (plaque-puzzle note creator), and Sampler (YouTube-to-sampler converter).
- bop, the startup's iOS app, lets users place instruments and effects on a grid to remix a base song and export directly to TikTok or Instagram, with a multiplayer version in development.
- Zonoozy said the company is deliberately not infusing AI generation into its apps, arguing that if AI makes content more abundant, 'taste and human perspective and interaction and participation even more important and even more valuable.'
- A 'musical sandbox mixer' product that lets users play with music-making elements and create instruments is planned for release this year.
Why it matters: With $5.5M in pre-seed and ex-Spotify advisor Dawn Ostroff attached, A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya is making a contrarian bet: that playful, non-generative music interaction tools can capture younger audiences who already remix culture through games and filters — taking a deliberate counter-position to the wave of AI song-generation startups chasing the same market.
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